Solidarity With the People of Kashmir
India’s brutal occupation of Kashmir is only getting worse. The situation there demands our attention and those struggling for justice need our solidarity.
Indian government forces check the prescriptions of a woman before allowing her to walk toward the hospital amid curfew-like restrictions after Indian authorities revoked Article 370 and Article 35A, on August 17, 2019 in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, India. (Yawar Nazir / Getty Images)
On August 5, the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution which had, since 1947, accorded a special status to the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), including a separate constitution and autonomy over internal administrative matters.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a forty-minute address to the nation combined perfectly his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Hindu nationalist and neoliberal agenda by claiming that abolishing Kashmiri autonomy would boost economic development and curb Islamist terrorism in the region.
The abolishing of Article 370 had to be carried out by force. Since August 5 the Indian government has brutally cut Kashmir off from the rest of the world by installing paramilitary rule and suspending internet and phone services.
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